SawDust_Junkie

Oh and another question. Has anyone ever used Jotoba ? I think is what it is called. Brazillian Cherry I think, instead of Mahogany for the back on a Les Paul. One of the local wood working shops I frquent carries it in 8/4 stock, but they only have stocked Mahogany in 4/4 so far. The Jotoba is very similar to Mahogany, maybe a bit harder and heavier than Mahogany, but I planned on doing a chambered body anyway to reduce the weight, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I am considering a Les Paul copy for my next project (set neck and all). But I have looked at several tutorials both here and at other sites on the web. It seems to me that everyone who builds a Les Paul, glues "wings" on the peghead to get the full dimensions of the peghead. What I am confused about is why this is done. Is it mainly to cut down of the size of wood you have to purchase and reduce the cost. Lets face it, to buy a piece of Mahogany wide enough to accomodate the full peghead width would be more board feet of wood, and you would waste a bit when you cut the neck down, but I am concerned that gluing "wings" on the peg head would not have good strength for the tuners when under string tension. Apparently it is not a problem as most people do this, but is it worth saving money on the wood or would I be better off using a piece of wood that is wide enough to cut the entire peghead from and go ahead and waste the extra wood ? Anyway, it was just something I was pondering.

Hi Ford ! I really lke the idea you have for the bass, with the rout-out and laminating a top and bottom plate. It looks like it will really turn out nice if the work you have done so far is any indication ! The only thing I am not really sure about is your idea to have the wood shop plane it down for you. An odd shaped piece of wood like that seems to me like it would not lend itself to being planed very easily. Especially with the routed out sections. I would think that the planer knives might catch those sections and possibly rip it up with disasterous results. I would think that a thickness sander would be more suitable to accomplish what you want to do. But hey, I'm a newbie myself, so what do I know ! As far as the back plate, I would think that a Walnut or Koa or Mahogany back with a Maple top would gve a good balance of tone, but I am not much of a bass player and don't really know what woods are generally used for them. I think I have seen alot bass bodies for sale that are Walnut ?

Hey AlGee ! The only thing that I could think of that I would be happy with would be to cut the headstock like in this pic and then laminate another piece of maple onto the peghead and drill for your new 3 x 3 hole configuration.

That's a good idea sirkent. I will have to check my local hobby stores and see if I can find a saw. I have found a Japanese pull saw at a local woodworking shop with a .024" kerf. What I am curious about is those of you who have bought a saw locally, what do you use for a miter ? Did you build your own jig or what ? Also I have looked around a bit, and have been unable to find a metal ruler or yardstick that measures to the 64ths of an inch. I would think I would need one in order to build a jig and miter to be able to properly meaure the fret spacing. I say a metal ruler, because I would want something that last for quite awhile.

Well you know www, like the name says, "Fender4me". I have always been partial to Strats, so I felt that it was appropriate that my first build be a Strat copy. Who knows, I may have to create a new moniker, "Custom4me" !

Thanks xebryus ! I am thinking that I will just use a tinted grain filler, like a Walnut color, then sand back to just get the grain to "pop" out, and then finish with a clear nitro. That was my thought anyway. If all else fails and that does not work out, I will sand back and paint it a solid color. Yes I did the neck myself, but I am not quite satisfied with it. I may do some more shaping to thin it out some more. Like I said in my original post, it still feels a little fat.

Alright guys, here are some new progress pics. Ths is my "dry-run" putting all the pieces together. I still have alot of sanding to do prior to finishing, and I'm not sure if I like the neck shapng yet or not. It still feels a little "fat" to me. The Fat Strat pickguard was not what I wanted, but I am tryng to keep costs down on this first project. I really envisioned a black S/S/S pickguard, matching Fender noiseless single coils, but I can do that later. I tried to give some shots of the neck to show the fret work, but they didn't turn out too good. I am not a photographer ! The inlay is Abalone dots. The tuners are Schaller Mini M6s. The pickguard is the original off of my MIM Fat Strat, with a Lace Sensor that I placed in the neck position. Please feel free to critique, but take it easy on me ! This is my first build after all ! Progress Pics (not sure why, but in my browser, the pics first load up really large, then resize after the pic is downloaded, may be a problem for dial-up users)

Just an update for jay5, got to use my new bandsaw over the weekend. I did two jobs with it. Well, only one actually. I cut out some of my deer bone into rough blanks for my nuts. That worked really well. Now have to impose on my neighbor again and use his grinding wheel to shape them. I tried using the bandsaw to cut my peghead down to the final shape, but that didn't work out so well. The saw has a maximum cut heigth of 3 7/8", and I was using the 3/8" blade that I got with it. That was tall enough to fit the Strat peg head under, but the problem was the blade wanted to wander on the top part of the cut. The bottom of the cut followed the line exactly, but the top kept straying. I don't know if the blade tension was not tight enough or if this saw is just not going to be heavy duty enough for this large of a cut. Anyway, I was able to use the saw to cut relief cuts about every 1/4" along the face of the peg head. Then had to use a handsaw to slowly cut cut along my profile. This worked out well, and after much, much sanding, the peg head turned out great. I will post some new progress pictures soon and let you see for yourself.

Hey Jay ! I actually went ahead and bought the saw. I went by the guys house and looked at it and it was in excellent condition. It is used, but not abused. I figured, hey, for $75.00, with four blades, how can I lose. It's not a heavy duty saw by any means, but I figure if I take my time when using it and don't force anything or get in any hurries, it will work just fine. And another bonus is that when my wife saw what it was ( she didn't really know what a bandsaw was or could do) she decided that she may be able to use it for some craft ideas she's had. So, I didn't even catch any grief for spending the money on another tool ! If anyone is interested, I will post later with my impressions on how well it performs and recommend either for or against it.

Wow CGH ! That is truly a beautiful gutar ! When I first started thinking about building guitars years ago I originally wanted to make a quality acoustic. Now that I am in the process of building my first solid body, I have an even greater appreciation of the skill involved in building a fine acoustic instrument. As I have never built an acoustic myself I have no real frame of reference, but it seems to me that a solid body has to be much more forgiving than an acoustic. You have truly done a wonderful job ! One question, is that variation in color on the flat-top a trick of the light or camera ? It is the only thing that distracts from the guitars asthetics that I can see.

Hey Guitarman, I am the same as you. I never play tremolo, but on my Strat (with the vintage tremolo system) I have tightened the bridge screws all the way down, and tightened the springs as you talked about. This in effect gives you a hardtail bridge, so to speak. The tremolo will still work bending froward, but it takes a good of pressure to move it, and the backward movement of the tremolo is eliminated because the back of the bridge plate is resting against the body of the guitar.

Does anyone here have, or have used this bandsaw from Grizzly : http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnumber=G8976 I found someone locally who has this saw for sale, used, (about 20 months old) at $75.00. He is including 3-4 blades along with the saw. I have been looking this saw on the Grizzly web page for a couple of months and think it would work well for my needs. Everyone I have heard talk about Grizzly tools seems to like them and think they are pretty good quality, but I have never purchased anything from them. I e-mailed the guy with the bandsaw for sale and he replied back that I could come look at it one night this week. I am tempted, as $75.00 is a good savings. The saw sells for $140.00 new at Grizzly, but a new one comes with warranty and all. I was just curious if any of you have ever used this saw and what are your thoughts on it. Thanks everybody !

If you have any good local woodworking supply stores, they would be a good place to look also. I have two in my area, and they both carry oil-based grain fillers.

Hello feylya, I am a rookie myself, but I would think that Brazlian Mohagany would be fine. Especially if you have an approprate truss rod. Also don't know if there is anything special about a 7 string as far as the scale length goes, but if you are doing a standard scale length, any of the vendors such as Stewart-Mac. or Warmoth or Allparts sells pre-slotted and radiused fret boards for the standard scale lengths. And the one I bought from Stewart-Mac for my Strat copy should be plenty wide enough for a seven string to give you room to shape it down to your neck width. As for the cheapest, I am not sure, but I bought a 25 1/2 scale, 22 fret,Rosewood, pre-slotted fretboard from Stewart-Mac, and I had to sand down about an 1/8" or more on each side to get my fret board shaped to my neck. So that should work fine for a seven string I would think. This fretboard was about $21.00.

I bought a Chicago Tools 1 3/4 hp plunge router from Harbor Freight Tools for $40.00. (it was on sale at the time, but I think this model is only $49.00 regularly) Most of Harbor Freights tools are pretty cheap (as in qualtiy anyway) but like yourself, I was just wanting to get something I could use to start my foray into guitar building without breaing the bank. Down the road I will invest in something better and more durable, but this works for now.

We were discussing the preparation of natural bone as a nut material in another thread over the past couple of days. I recently obatined some deer bones from helping a friend skin out a deer and was wondering how to properly prepare them. This link is to that thread: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11856 The last post in the thread has a paragraph from a banjo building site I found with some information on preparing the raw bone. The last step may be useful to you as far as getting the bone to be white if that is what you want. The site said to soak it in peroxide for about 15 minutes to "bleach" it. As far the pores go, I would have to agree with RAI6. Bone is a natural material and each piece will have its own unique charateristics.

Thanks jer ! I read through some of the links you suggested and learned a few things, but I also found the following at http://zeppmusic.com/banjo/nuts.htm "The process is easy but involved: obtain a cow "knuckle" or leg bone from the butcher, saw off and discard the ends, extract and discard the marrow, scrape as much soft tissue from the bone as possible, simmer the bone in hot (200 degree F) water with a little detergent added for 60-80 minutes, air-dry the bone, bandsaw into rough nut and saddle blanks, degrease for a couple of weeks or longer in household ammonia or white gas (heavy duty fire hazard), rinse in detergent-water, air-dry, bleach in 3% hydrogen peroxide for 5-10 minutes. Whew. Degreasing is absolutely critical because grease will otherwise seep eventually from the bone into the nearby wood, and cause finish and wood to part company, glue joints to fail, and in general make a permanent, indelible mess. " I think this is what I was looking for. A complete method of how to prepare the bone for use as a nut material. I have found other sites and books with information on how to actaully make the nut once you have decided on the material.

Beautiful guitar ! I like the finish, even if it is a bit delicate. I am curious though, I noticed you didn't do any round over or body contours on it. How does it feel as far as comfort and weight goes ?

Just curious if anyone else has any suggestions about using deer bone for a homemade nut. LukeR said he had read about boiling the bones in diluted vinegar for a few hours. Is that general consensus or does someone know a more specific method or have a link to site with more info on this ?

That is a really great looking bass. My wife did a marble painting effect on the walls of our dining room with a similar technique as described by frenzy. Apply the base coat and then dab the second color on, except I think she used a sponge like Dugz said they did on the chapel. I believe also that to get the best effect, you need to use two different shades of the same color, i.e. a dark grey, mottled with a light grey for example. (as a side note, "Is it common for a bass to use that many bolts to secure the neck ? I don't believe I have ever seen a guitar with that much hardware holding the neck on !)

LOL Luke ! No, I would not say that I am Ted Nugent by any stretch of the imagination. I am nowhere near as accomplished a guitarist as he is (although there are those who would not agree that he is accomplished, but he is way more talented than I) I also do not share many of his political leanings. But I am not going to get into politics on this forum ! It seems like I read something about boiling the bones too, but I could not remember exactly what it was. I did not know if boiling them would weaken them or not. As for skinning deer, my dad took me hunting as a little guy and I always loved it. I haven't gotten to do much of it in the last few years, but a friend called me up and asked for some help, so whatta gonna do !

Thanks for the reply www ! I am not too concerned if iyt works or not. If not, Iwill buy a bone or tusk or corian blank and use that, but the opportunity presented itself with the deer bone and I thought, hey what the heck why not try it ? I just was unsure if there a particular way to cure the bone or clean it or bleach it or whatever you know ?

I want to try and word this in such a way as to not start a flame war, but erik, you stated : I think this a simplistic viewpoint of the world. Its easy to set back and say "Oh they hate us because they are jealous", or "They hate us for our freedoms". But in reality, the people responsible for the worst attack on America (in my lifetime at least) have stated plainly that they are set on attacking America and inflicting injury upon us directly due to our actions in the world. Osama Bin Laden has expressly stated that the motivation behind his drive to attack America is due to: 1.) The presence of American military forces in Islamic holy lands (i.e. Saudi Arabia, at least since the first Persian Gulf War) 2.) The sanctions against Iraq, which were adamantly promoted by the U.S. and were seen by many in the Arab world as punishing the innocent Iraqi civilians 3.) The United States unfaltering support of the Israeli government. (Don't get me wrong, I believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves from terrorist attacks just as we do, but the Israelis have been guilty of their share of attrocities also. They are also now and have been in violation of numerous UN resoltuions for many, many years.) Aside from all of these reasons, the United States has a long history of supporting despots and dictators in the Middle East, as long as these tyrannical leaders kept the oil spigots open and flowing freely. WE routinely turn a blind eye to the brutal Saudi royal family and supported the Shah of Iran despite some terrible human rights violations. We even backed and supplied Saddam himself, while fighting the radical Islamists that deposed the Shah and assumed control. I'm sorry if the mods think this is getting too politcal and I usually wouldn't delve into these matters as I come here to escape these type of discussions eslewhere. But I get a bit rattled when some of my fellow Americans offer simplistic explanations of why there are people in the world who would harm us. We must learn to look at ourselves with a more realistic assesment and realize that even though America is generally a benevolent country, we are capable of doing the wrong thing at times and we should be willing to admit it when we do and try to correct it. I think if we did this, more people in the world would have a positive view of the United States and Americans. erik, I do not mean this to be an attack on your position, I am simply stating my opinions, and this will be the end of my political prosthelyzing here at PG !

Yeah I would like to see some more pictures too Pibrocher. I can't quite get my head around how that thing works from that shot. Also, it seems to me that with this method, you are radiusing the fretboard before slotting for the frets. Is that correct ?